


Corruption by Salt Water

by merrynovice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: Angst without fluff, Horrid endings, Seriously not one speck of fluff here, much sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrynovice/pseuds/merrynovice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post ADWD, one possible ending to the Jaime/Cersei/Brienne triangle.  An awful one, you've been warned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corruption by Salt Water

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was finishing up my Dances with Steel story and just when the unicorns were surfing in on a wave of rainbow glitter I had to take a long drive. This - piece- somehow wrote itself in my brain and I had to get it out before I could safely go back to wading knee deep in sweet fluff.
> 
> Oh, stole another song lyric, don't know how that keeps happening. From Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix

Corruption by salt water

 

Every night she curls her body around the golden hand as she falls asleep.  The nights that she does sleep, that is.  Those are the nights she wakes up in a sweat, thrashing, trying to push him away from her before the door opens this time, even though that may not have made any difference at all, in the end.  Sometimes, when she’s balanced on the knife that divides sleep from hell, she stops time and waits for him to lean in just a little closer and kiss her, begging her fevered mind to give her in dreams what she never tasted in life.

The other nights, the long ones that hold no respite, she polishes the hand with her tears.  But gold needs no such attention.  It remains bright and uncorrupted despite the actions of men or women.  A lover’s tender caress or salty tears smeared by calloused hands, makes no difference to gold.

The uncle had tried to take the hand from her.  Tried to pry it from her fingers, accused her of wanting to sell it, for money.  It was the brother, the disfigured one called imp, who had taken pity on her.  Ugly and scar marked as herself, he knew of loss as well, it seemed.   Tyrion had been the one to find them, hours later.  Had known at first glance what scene had played out, in that cold tower room at the Keep.  Trapped in the fog of her grief, she had been grateful to Tyrion for assuming control, issuing orders, and offering explanations, such as they were.

She sleeps in ditches, abandoned doorways, and yes, hedges.  Often she openly steals what little she needs from the frozen fields, but she is never stopped or questioned.  She remembers thinking honor was a thing worth keeping, but she can’t fit the pieces together as to why.  If words are wind then honor is no more substantial than the air that swallows them up.  It would be easy enough for her to get money for an inn.  A raven sent, a paid job.  But that would mean walking among the living.  She is never sure if she speaks the language, her voice unused for weeks, centuries even.  And the one she seeks is not in this town.  Nor the next.  But she must keep searching.  There is nothing else left of him save the sword, named to remind her she is not free to find her peace, and the hand.

Once, a man tried to steal the hand.  She killed him quickly, viciously spinning him around to face her when he tried to run.  Driving her dagger deep into his bowels, wrenching it up with all her strength, letting his guts spill out over her tattered sleeve, warming her with their stench.    She hadn’t wanted to soil Oathkeeper with his blood.  Always, she prays to cross paths with a better thief, one who is stronger and quicker than she.  For she will never part with Jaime’s hand while she lives. 

She trudges on worn out boots from one village to the next, her pain making her invisible in ways her ugliness never did.  She is meant to be looking for a small wolf with dark hair, but her eyes pass over all but catch and stutter on the tall ones, the ones with golden hair.   She knows they cannot be him.  His hair will be dulled by now, his skin, once so warm, now sunken and crawling with worms, his voice never to be heard, and his eyes never to see.  _This must be how he felt_ , she thinks again, torturing herself, _when he knew that she was gone._

They had raced toward the Red Keep as soon as they got word that the Targaryan host was advancing.  Jaime had ben so alive then, focused with the energy of rescuing his child before the incipient battle.  And his sister, of course.  Always Cersei.  He was not worried; he laughed, he filled up her world.  He said that with Brienne at his side they could take on any task, vanquish any foe.  The way he looked at her…she would have followed him anywhere.  Anywhere, if he had asked it of her.  If only he had let her, instead of gifting her with a life sentence.

They were too late for Tommen.  Though her people called her Mother, the Silver Queen had no mercy for the children of others.  Little Tommen was executed without a trial, by the leader of the strange dark warriors who flooded the city with the new Queen.  He was so excited to see the dragons- Cersei had said they would be pardoned and return to Casterly Rock.  Instead she held her last son while his life ran out onto the steps before the Iron Throne. 

Jaime raged that he had not been there to comfort her.  But only Brienne cared about Jamie’s grief, offering her mannish shoulder for him to cry on in the stead of Cersei’s slender one.   And he did cry, hot tears wetting Brienne’s neck while his sister locked her doors to him.  _It’s all right_ , she thought, _it’s all right. Take anything you want from me, anything at all,_ holding him in his rooms, glad- yes- for any reason to close her arms around his shuddering back, on the edge of his narrow bed. 

He had looked at her then, really looked at her.  “If only we could start over,” he’d said to her.  “I’ve fucked this life up beyond any salvation.”  She had been such a fool, then.  She heard what she wanted him to say.  She thought that he was offering her the kiss of a new beginning when he leaned in to her, his eyes red and hand shaking, grasping her arm. He was so close that his unshaven beard prickled her cheek and his breath warmed her scar. Really, it was only ever meant to be a kiss goodbye.  She knew that now.  But Cersei didn’t let her have even that.  She slipped in the door like a wight, barefoot and disarrayed. 

“Myrcella…”  She’d moaned, slumping against the wall. 

The new young Lord Martell had sought to curry favor with the vanquishing Queen by eliminating the last Baratheon child.  The stiff burlap sack had finally disgorged a head Cersei could recognize. Brienne saw the knife just as Cersei’s eyes narrowed on her, took in Jamie’s closeness.  He had leapt to her side, the sudden removal of his warmth sending a chill through Breinne.

“Have you forsaken me as well?”

“Never, “ he had promised, saying the word into her hair, against her neck, and kissing it onto her lips. Had he seen the dagger as well?  Did he know his twin’s mind?

“You swore a vow,” she told him.  “You cannot live without me.” Her anger and despair filled the room like a billowing fire, thick with choking smoke and danger.

“Cersei,” he whispered, and it stung Brienne’s ears to hear. “I remember.  But we live.  It is not too late.”

“I shall _not_ live.”  Then she was flying at Brienne, eyes wild.  The knife sank into Brienne’s shoulder up to the jeweled hilt, glancing off bone. Cersei wrenched it out with both hands and raised it again when Jaime encircled his sister with his arms and dragged her away.  Brienne knew Jaime’s strength, but Cersei had the power of a desperate animal.  She twisted and pulled against him, screaming out her anguish as Brienne sat, numb. Knowing she could not come between them.

Jaime was gentle with his sister, but held her fast against his body.  She did not calm.  She slashed at him with the dagger, slicing open gashes on his thigh, then his face. His arms slicked with blood, she twisted free, lunging at Brienne again.  This time Jaime brought her to the floor and dragged himself on top of her, left hand closing against her throat, golden hand adding terrible weight to one of flesh and blood.  Her wild eyes settled on Jaime’s face and her body finally relaxed for him.  The blade slipped from her hand as Jaime bore down, never breaking his tender gaze.  “I love you, Cersei.  We are one.”

After Cersei stilled, Jaime gathered her to his breast and kissed her pale forehead in silence.  Kneeling beside her body, he gently laid her back onto the stone floor, running his fingers through her short, matted hair, and then took up the dagger, turning it over in his hands.  Suddenly Brienne knew.  In an instant she was there, desperately grasping for the weapon.  Jaime fought against her in earnest, kicking her away savagely with strength she had only seen directed at his enemies, knocking the wind from her.  As she struggled to her feet, his expression softened.   “Find the Stark orphan,” he said.  “Be mother and father to her.  Promise me.”

She could deny him nothing, even the unwanted gift of a reason to stay alive.   She nodded, frozen in place.  “Godspeed, Brienne.”  For a long moment he looked at her from across his sister’s corpse.  _No!_   She wanted to beg him to put down the knife but there was no air in the room with which to form the words. 

With a sad, small shake of his head he spoke.  “You have been more than a friend.  I would…goodbye.” Then he tilted his head back and drew the blade across his throat. 

The gash in Jaime’s neck stopped time and sucked all sounds form the room save her own pulse crashing in her ears, nearly blinding her with panic.  She saw only a thin red line and thought the ornamental blade had dulled, it wasn’t deep. She thought if she could bind it, press it closed… she stumbled to him, but then his heart beat and the blood came spilling out red and thick and hot. Blood covered his body and her arms, burbling over his white doublet in thick spurts with every slowing contraction of his heart.  Frantically, she scraped her hands through the blood pooling on the floor as if she could gather it up and put it back into him, stop this.  He watched her, and then his pale lips formed one last word before he collapsed over his sister, curling around her protectively.  _“..sorry…”_   or, perhaps it was _“Cersei.”_

Brienne kneeled at his side, gasping for air as his last breath sputtered out of him.  He held out his hand and she took it in both of her own, pressing it to her lips, tasting his blood.  His sad eyes met and held her own, then dulled and he was gone, his golden fire forever extinguished, metal hand clattering onto the flagstones.

 Alone, she embraced his lifeless corpse; her choking sobs echoing in the still chamber.  Her tears cleansed the blood from his face and she smoothed his hair back from his silent brow.  She held him to her, rocking, until his sticky blood bound them together and his body was nearly as cold as the stone floor.  Before he stiffened, she arranged his limbs back into the position he had chosen to leave the world in, twinned with his sister.   Then she sat back against the bed and waited.  It was Tyrion who found them, come to tell Jaime of the death of his last child.  Tyrion, who asked no questions.  Tyrion, who spoke for her in those first days when she could not speak, or even think, for herself.

Now, she walks from town to town.  She might find the orphan, she might not.  It matters little.  She will honor her promise until she dies, as all men and women finally may.  Until then, she sleeps with the golden hand held tight against her heart.  A poor souvenir, a substitute for the real thing. Jaime had neither loved nor wanted the replacement.  It is fitting, she knows.  Yet it is everything to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry? I'm slinking away now to add more buttercream and sprinkles to DWS, should be up soon.


End file.
